Taylor’s power law of fluctuation scaling and the growth-rate theorem

Joel E. Cohen

Theoretical Population Biology, 2013, vol. 88, issue C, 94-100

Abstract: Taylor’s law (TL), a widely verified empirical relationship in ecology, states that the variance of population density is approximately a power-law function of mean density. The growth-rate theorem (GR) states that, in a subdivided population, the rate of change of the overall growth rate is proportional to the variance of the subpopulations’ growth rates. We show that continuous-time exponential change implies GR at every time and, asymptotically for large time, TL with power-law exponent 2. We also show why diverse population-dynamic models predict TL in the limit of large time by identifying simple features these models share: If the mean population density and the variance of population density are (exactly or asymptotically) non-constant exponential functions of a parameter (e.g., time), then the variance of density is (exactly or asymptotically) a power-law function of mean density.

Keywords: Exponential growth; Population growth rate; Lewontin–Cohen model; Variance; Population density (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004058091300035X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:thpobi:v:88:y:2013:i:c:p:94-100

DOI: 10.1016/j.tpb.2013.04.002

Access Statistics for this article

Theoretical Population Biology is currently edited by Jeremy Van Cleve

More articles in Theoretical Population Biology from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().